Tag Luis Suarez

The day began with the Greater Manchester Police confiscating copies of Red Issue outside Old Trafford, and ended with Sir Alex Ferguson finally coming out fighting on the issue of racism. In between Patrice Evra wildly celebrated a Manchester United victory in front of the Stretford End, while Luis Suárez and Kenny Dalglish brought further embarrassment to their club. Just your average United versus Liverpool clash, then.

Barely two weeks on from the disgraceful scenes at Anfield, where 40,000 Liverpudlians sought to set race relations back a generation by victimising Patrice Evra, United exacted a modicum of revenge in Manchester. United won comfortably enough, but there was far more to this occasion than the odd goal in three. Set in the context of Suárez culpability over racially abusing Evra last October, the clash sparked into life before a ball had even been kicked when the Uruguayan refused the United captain’s pre-match handshake. The striker’s snub ensured a testy encounter, with players on both sides confronting each other in the tunnel at half-time, and then again at the final whistle.

GMP accused the long-running fanzine of ‘inciting racial hatred’ in what is surely a massive over-reaction against an image that sought to mock Liverpool’s lack of action over racism. Inside the stadium fans reported that both fanzines and t-shirts were confiscated by stewards, although when contacted by Rant, the club insisted that it had not asked the police to seize the fanzines.

“Officers are now seizing the fanzines and in consultation with the Crown Prosecution Service we will take appropriate action against anyone either found selling this particular fanzine or provocatively displaying the image in public,” said Chief Superintendent Mark Roberts.

“I have taken this cause of action as both items are potentially offensive and we cannot be in a situation where hundreds or thousands of people were displaying offensive images at a football match. The consequences of taking no action could have resulted in public order incidents inside or outside the ground.”

Sadly police took no action against the deeply offensive image of Suárez lauding it inside Old Trafford, or for that matter, broadcast to millions via television.

Tensions were further increased before kick off when Liverpool’s star striker refused to shake Evra’s hand, resulting in an frustrated reaction from the Frenchman, and a counter snub from Rio Ferdinand. Suárez’ refusal came after Liverpool manager Dalglish had promised, on Thursday, that the matter was now behind his errant player and a handshake would take place.

Indeed, the Uruguayan’s deliberate provocation almost brought dividends for the visitors, with Evra flying into a tackle with the striker barely 30 seconds into the game. Referee Dowd was saved a difficult decision when the Frenchman flipped Ferdinand on his heading, missing Suárez in the process. Had the striker’s pre-match snub been as apparent to fans inside the stadium, as it was to those watching on TV, anger may well have spilled over from the pitch and into the stands.

To those watching the Uruguayan’s actions were little more than a premeditated act of insensitivity – another in a long line of indelibly offensive behaviour by the striker. It is also likely to backfire; an act so immature that even Dalglish’s one-eye defiance can hold no water. One wonders what Liverpool owner John Henry, still silent after all these months, must be thinking over in Boston.

“I could not believe it, I just could not believe it,” Ferguson told Sky Sports.

“We had a chat this morning and Patrice said: ‘I’m going to shake his hand, I have nothing to be ashamed of, I’m going to keep my dignity.’ And he [Suárez] refuses. He’s a disgrace to Liverpool Football Club, that certain player should not be allowed to play for Liverpool again.

“The history that club’s got and he does that and in a situation like today could have caused a riot. I was really disappointed in that guy, it was terrible what he did. It created a tension, you’ve seen the referee didn’t know what to do about it. It was a terrible start to the game, a terrible atmosphere it created.

“We’ve got to get our house in order in terms of fighting racism. It’s an important issue in this country. Football’s come a long way from the days of John Barnes when they were throwing bananas at him to where we are today. We can’t go back. We have to go forward in a positive way and ban it altogether.”

By half-time opposing players were at each others’ throats as Evra sought to confront Suárez, and those on both sides engaged in what Sky Sports euphemistically called “shenanigans” – it could have been a lot more serious than a few minutes of pushing in the Old Trafford tunnel.

Meanwhile, in the studio Gary Neville and Darren Fletcher clashed with Jamie Redknapp. The former Liverpool player placed blame for the incident on the Football Association’s insistence that the normal pre-match routine take place, while Neville called the striker’s snub “embarrassing”.

Then came the moment United fans hoped for as Wayne Rooney scored twice within five minutes of the re-start to put the Reds in control and top of the Premier League table. With no little drama Suárez bundled in a goal for the visitors, but anything less than victory would have been an injustice for the hosts in a match that United thoroughly dominated.

Once again football seemed the back-drop to a bigger story though. Evra’s joyous victory celebration in front of the Stretford End was just yards from Suárez as the Uruguayan trudged off the pitch, head hung low. Pepe Reina and Martin Skrtel were only prevented from confronting the United captain by the rapid intervention of referee Dowd.

Over to Kenny for an apology? Not likely, as Dalglish once again failed to confront the issue of racism, instead blaming the media for increasing the tension surrounding the match. Laughably, the Liverpool manager also pretended that he was unaware of Suárez’ non-handshake. It is, seemingly, never Liverpool’s fault.

“I never knew he never shook his hand,” claimed the increasingly befuddled Dalglish.

“I’ll take your word for it. But I don’t know. I wasn’t there. I never saw it. That is contrary to what I was told. I think you are very severe and are bang out of order to blame Luis Suárez for anything that happened here today. You know something else, when we had the FA Cup tie, because there wasn’t a 24-hour news channel in the build-up to the game, nothing like this happened.”

The striker continued in a similar vein, taking to Twitter to claim that “everything is not as it seems.” Noises coming from the Liverpool dressing room, leaked via the media, suggested that Suárez had not rejected Evra’s hand, but that the Frenchman had withdrawn the offer. There has been a long-line of ludicrous statements emanating from Anfield since October, but this one surely tops them all. It is not, seemingly, ever Liverpool’s fault.

Meanwhile, at GMP headquarters the police continue to hold more than 1,600 copies of Red Issue as “evidence” of a potential offence under the Race Act. It was a day in which football leapt from myopic denial, to the police state, all in one short afternoon.

Patrice Evra must choose whether to shake Luis Suárez’ hand this weekend after the Football Association insisted that normal matchday protocols would be in place for the Premier League fixture between Manchester United and Liverpool at Old Trafford on Saturday lunchtime. Suárez returned, against Tottenham Hotspur on Monday, from an eight match ban imposed by the FA for racially abusing Evra in the meeting between the two sides last October.

Unlike the recent meeting between Chelsea and QPR, where the FA abandoned the usual pre-game meet and greet between the teams “in an attempt to further defuse tensions,” Evra is likely to be offered the Uruguayan’s hand on Saturday. This comes just a fortnight after Evra was widely jeered at Anfield, with one fan caught making a ‘monkey gesture’ towards the Frenchman.

However, manager Sir Alex Ferguson recently suggested that Evra should “rise above” any temptation to ignore the Liverpool striker this weekend. “He should be applauded for what he did [reporting Suárez], standing up to it,” Ferguson said last week. “There is no shame for him. The matter is over. He can rise above that.”

News of the FA’s stance comes on the same day Ferguson has urged football to clamp down on racism in the game.

“I don’t understand at all where it’s coming from,” Ferguson told CNN. “This is a moment where we have to take stock and we should do something about it if it’s surfacing again, and be really hard and firm on any form or shape of racism. There have been a couple of examples recently which is not good. In 2012, you can’t believe it.”

The match did not conclude well for Patrice Evra, with the Manchester United captain allowing Dirk Kuyt to run inside and score Liverpool’s winning goal at the Kop End on Saturday. Indeed, by the end of a tortuous 90 minutes Evra looked mentally and physically shattered; beaten both by his opponents and fatigue. Yet, at no moment was the French defender defeated by the melting pot of vile – at times overtly racist – hatred directed by Liverpool’s supporters. Standing proud to the end, Evra’s side may have lost an FA Cup fourth round encounter, but the defender completed the game riding the highest of horses.

Catalysed by Kenny Dalglish and Liverpool’s hierarchy, Anfield’s regulars jeered the United number three’s every touch. This much was expect given the extent to which Liverpool has sought to, and largely succeeded in, regressing race relations at the club over the past three months. Few stood back from the organised cacophony; hate was not only directed at Evra, but deemed universally acceptable.

“There’s only one lying b*stard,” sang the Kop, echoing Liverpool’s ongoing defence of Luis Suárez – that Evra simply fabricated an allegation of racial abuse in October. This was a song delivered without irony, given that Dalglish, Suárez, Kuyt, and director of football Damien Commoli were each caught changing their stories to the independent Regulatory Commission that sat in judgement of the Liverpool striker.

Yet, it was no surprise that Liverpool manager Dalglish chose to categorise 90 minutes of abuse as nothing more than “friendly banter.” After all, the 60-year-old Scot has proven to be as unreconstructed as they come, having chosen to smear Evra, as Dalglish’s own evidence to the Commission demonstrated, right from the very start of the affair back in October.

While the atmosphere was deeply unpleasant, far worse was to come from Liverpool’s once proud supporters than mere noise. Shortly before half-time one supporter was caught on camera aiming a ‘monkey gesture‘ towards Evra. It was an image posted on this site, and to Twitter. Within minutes the picture had spread throughout the football community.

Merseyside Police confirmed on Saturday evening that a 59-year-old man from North Wales was arrested following an ‘alleged’ incident at the match. The supporter was taken to a local station for questioning.

Yet, there has been not a word from Liverpool about the incident. So quick to launch a smear campaign against Evra, the Football Association or any other party deemed to have wronged the club; so reticent to decry racism in genuine terms.

One wonders whether the club will ever come to understand the very real damaged caused by its reaction to Suárez’ sanction. Liverpool, and Dalglish in particular, not only failed to apologise for the striker’s racist abuse, but the club has now sponsored a new wave of race hate among its fan-base. The latest incident is the third this season, beginning with Suárez, and including the disgraceful abuse of Oldham Athletic defender Tom Adeyemi earlier this month.

In keeping with the pattern, Dalglish praised Liverpool’s supporters on Saturday.

“The fans are entitled to support their team, absolutely no problem,” claimed Dalglish on Saturday.

“I don’t think there was anything there that was untoward. I think both sets of fans were a magnificent advert for their clubs. Both clubs can be very proud of the fans they have here. There was a good bit of banter between both fans, which is brilliant because you don’t want to take that away.”

But the genuine concern is that Evra’s contemporaries will now be less inclined to report incidents of racial abuse given the furious reaction extracted from Liverpool supporters by their club. It is a concern touched on by a media community now growing restless at Liverpool’s approach to race relations.

“I found it horrible, I found it a very difficult day to report on,” Sunday Times journalist Jonathan Northcroft told Sunday Supplement.

“I live in Liverpool and my partner is black and she’s found this very uncomfortable. We know black friends who are Liverpool fans and they’ve also found it very uncomfortable. What we had yesterday was a black player being booed and barracked and targeted by the Liverpool fans and called a liar. And for what? His crime was to have complained about racial abuse the last time he was at the stadium. That particular case was upheld by an FA commission, but he’s being targeted and treated as a villain.”

Meanwhile, Evra, although clearly drained by the fixture’s intensity, reacted not once to the bile from the stands. Indeed, the 30-year-old has behaved with a quiet dignity throughout, keeping largely silent in the face of supporter-driven hatred, and media scrutiny.

But Evra’s silence has only been in the public sphere, behind the scenes the Frenchman proved not only to be a forthright and credible witness, but a genuine leader. Yet, with the defender so heavily abused just a day after QPR player Anton Ferdinand was sent a bullet in the post – presumably by a disgruntled Chelsea supporter – questions will be asked about football’s ability to deal with racism in the future.

“Are we saying if you make a complaint about racial abuse you’re going to get a bullet sent through the post to you or you’re going to get called a liar by 40,000 fans?” added the Mirror’s Oliver Holt.

“We’re trying to empower black players not to put up with this any more, and yet we are in danger – because of the reaction that has happened and the vilification of players who have done nothing except complain about being racially abused – of pushing things back to a conspiracy of silence.”

In this Liverpool is highly culpable, as is the FA for allowing one of the country’s most venerated club’s to become a force not for unity, but division.

“Football at times can be like pantomime, you can boo the referee if you feel he makes a bad decision and you boo a player if you feel he has feigned an injury or made a bad tackle and you can live with that,” PFA chairman Gordon Taylor told talkSPORT.

“But when you are booing a player because he has made a complaint that was upheld by an independent panel, you worry that it is going to put off anybody complaining again because of the backlash and furore we have seen.

“That’s just what we don’t want because there is no point in having a campaign to eliminate such a highly sensitive issue as racism if it is going to get drowned out by the backlash.”

In that there is a lesson. Suárez’ punishment may have sent the proverbial message that racist abuse on the pitch is not acceptable. Perhaps it is now time for the Uruguayan’s club to face a similar judgement.

It recalls that classic Fawlty Towers episode. You know the one, where Basil does everything he can to ‘not mention the war’ as a group of German tourists visit his ramshackle hotel. Except, of course, the bit about not mentioning the war. Sir Alex Ferguson appears to have heeded that particular, if farcical, lesson this week, writing to fans attending the FA Cup fourth round tie with Liverpool at the weekend to appeal for good behaviour.

Fair enough one might think, with the tie likely to be even more tense than usual, and supporters’ groups keen for a full ticket allocation to be restored at Anfield. Curious though that Ferguson chose to complete the letter, sent to just over 5,000 fans, without a single mention of the Luis Suárez affair. After all, the fallout from Suárez’ racial abuse of Patrice Evra, and subsequent eight match ban, will still be felt at Anfield on Saturday even if the Uruguayan is absent.

Indeed, Suárez is one of the key reasons the tie has been shifted to an early kick-off, with the Football Association calling on the clubs to maintain order.

“FA Cup ties are tense affairs at the best of times,” Ferguson wrote in the letter to travelling United supporters.

“Add in the fact that Manchester United against Liverpool is the biggest game around and it becomes even more so. Your support is vital to the team and down the years that has been especially true at Anfield. But please put the emphasis on getting us into the next round and giving the sort of support you are famous for – positive, witty and loud.

“I wrote to fans attending the away match in October urging them to co-operate with stewards and officials at Liverpool so we can make a strong case for restoring our allocation for future United games at Anfield. The fans did almost everything asked of them that day and as a result, we have a much improved allocation for this important FA Cup tie. Please do everything you can to continue that good work and protect next season’s allocation.”

Ferguson continues, much as he did in October, to demand that United supporters respect local stewards and Anfield’s ground regulations. It’s a short-hand admonishment for those United supporters that neither sit nor keep the gangways clear at away fixtures.

In that narrow sense Ferguson’s appeal is perfectly sensible. Diligent work by supporters’ groups such as IMUSA and MUST, keen to stem a rising tide of reduced ticket allocations at away matches, will only pay dividends when United’s opponents run out of ammunition. Yet, Ferguson’s letter does not quite hit the mark either; not in the current climate, not with the stench of Suárez’ actions still hanging over the tie.

Indeed, the Suárez affair continues to place a strain on relations between Liverpool and United. The Anfield club released a series of inflammatory statements after the lengthy sanction to the Uruguayan was handed down by an FA Regulatory Commission. Liverpool’s repeated briefing of media outlets during the two month wait for a verdict is known to have irked Ferguson. Liverpool went on to slander Evra, accuse the FA of institutional conspiracy, and fail to even partially understand the nation’s mood. It is an episode that has brought shame on a once proud club; one of England’s oldest and most successful teams.

Meanwhile, Evra, United’s captain for the season, is bound to receive the ugliest of receptions at Anfield, all in the name of ‘supporting’ the Frenchman’s abuser. Few on Merseyside, it seems, will understand the irony when the all-too-inevitable barrage of abuse heads the defender’s way.

This is, of course, where Ferguson’s communication with supporters this week falls short. The legendary manager is also likely to dodge questions on the subject during his Friday press conference. Unlike hotel owner Basil Fawlty, Ferguson is simply not going to mention the war.

In reality the match will be dominated by talk of Suárez’ actions and eventual ban. The atmosphere, fuelled by Liverpool’s bloody-minded defence of the striker, is bound to increase tension between supporters. One can only hope that hostility does not extend beyond the verbal, to something far more sinister – much as it did the last time United visited Anfield for a cup tie in 2006.

Meanwhile, Evra will mercifully not face the burden of shaking Suárez’ hand on Saturday lunchtime, with the Uruguayan facing the sixth of an eight game ban. That pleasure will come when the sides meet in the Premier League next month. Liverpool’s players, meanwhile, will likely perform their usual trick of significantly increasing the intensity of performance against United. Few Anfield supporters will recognise the side that lost so tamely at Bolton Wanderers recently.

Which brings us back to Ferguson’s letter. Well meaning no doubt, but ultimately lacking the bite that it might have given the circumstances.

So the arguments are done, the verdict filed and the report offered: all 115 pages of it. And the ban – eventually – accepted by Luis Suárez and Liverpool for the Uruguay international’s racially motivated abuse of Patrice Evra on 13 October. Except they haven’t. Not really, with club and player still protesting innocence, defaming the Football Association and Patrice Evra in the process and, in full conspiratorial mood, suggesting evidence was deliberately missed by the independent panel. No genuine apology has been offered or ever will be by the Merseyside club or player for Suárez’ abuse of the United defender 10 weeks ago.

The truth, as established by the Independent FA Regulatory Commission is that seven times Suárez aimed abuse at the United player. Seven times he did so by referring in derogatory terms to the colour of the Frenchman’s skin. The facts, as former Liverpool manager Rafael Benitez once famously said, are no longer in doubt.

But the truth, it was once said, should never get in the way of a good story. Indeed, it has been one of the most disgraceful episodes in Liverpool’s history as the 119-year-old club set about deliberately prejudicing the most sensitive hearing the FA has held in years. From the get go, so the FA’s report tells us, Liverpool manager Kenny Dalglish slandered Evra, accusing the Frenchman of “doing this before” – an erroneous and offensive, but widely spread, piece of misinformation that the Senegalese-born Frenchman had made previously false accusations of racism. He hasn’t. Ever.

Meanwhile, the club issued a series of media briefings aimed at winning not the hearing, but in the court of public opinion, while constructing a case that we now know was built entirely on a lie. The lie that in Uruguay all instances use of the word “negro” is acceptable. The Commission, aided by two linguistics experts, systematically dismantled the excuse over 115 pages of the most thorough investigative report English football governance history.

Kenny Dalglish

Yet, Dalglish and player are steadfast in their refusal to fully apologise; utterly insistent that a widespread conspiracy, involving Manchester United, the FA, an Independent Commission and the media has taken down their man. Injustice they cry! It is has become a cult of total denial; a collective mental illness, led by the clan leader, Dalglish, who is taking hordes of followers with him.

“Ask a linguistic expert, which certainly I am not. They will tell you that the part of the country in Uruguay where he [Suárez] comes from, it is perfectly acceptable,” Dalglish told the media on Tuesday night.

He deliberately ignored the two linguistic experts used by the Commission that contradicted this position. The mind boggles.

“His wife calls him that and I don’t think he is offended by her. We have made a statement and I think it is there for everybody to read. Luis has made a brilliant statement and we will stand by him. We know what has gone on. We know what is not in the report and that’s important for us.

“I think it is very dangerous and unfortunate that you don’t actually know the whole content of what went on at the hearing. I’m not prepared, and I can’t say it, but I am just saying it is really unfortunate you never got to hear it. That’s all I’m saying. Wrong place, wrong time. It could have been anybody. I can’t answer for the FA, you ask them.”

Readers may be forgiven for thinking that, out-of-context, this is the rant of a madman, fuelled by suspicion, hate and delusion. Just because you’re paranoid, it doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you. Except this is no madman; Dalglish is quick-witted and in full control of his faculties, but still prepared to spread disinformation to the last. It is far more insidious than mere paranoia.

Almost universally outside insular Liverpool’s confines, the world of football has condemned the club for its stance. After all, Liverpool is a world renown institution that is a flag-bearer for English football. The club’s management should know better. And while United supporters can watch, dumbstruck by the utter ineptitude down the East Lancs Road, it is to football’s discredit that Liverpool has set out to destroy much of the work done to eliminate racism in football.

Voices of reason

Yet, the voices of reason will still hope that a recalcitrant Dalglish, perhaps prompted by the embarrassingly silent owner John W Henry, will eventually see sense. History suggests those voices do not hold their collective breaths.

“An apology would certainly help things because hen people do apologise it certainly moves things on,” Show Racism the Red Card chief executive Ged Grebby told Goal.com on Wednesday.

“I think that it would help the situation no end if he accepted that he had done wrong and personally apologised to Patrice Evra. If there was an element to this that he did understand the language differences then the easiest thing to do would have been to apologise.

“I think that Liverpool Football Club owe Patrice Evra an apology. They raised this issue about him having previous over the Chelsea incident when, if you look at that, it was two members of Manchester United’s staff that reported it. It was a legitimate incident. It wasn’t a red herring.

“The FA have sent out a really strong message to say that it is not acceptable in the game for there to be any kind of abuse where you are using people’s skin colour, religion or culture.”

Support for this position has come from across the football world, including those outside of a often parochial England. Indeed, for once the FA has set an example for which European nations can learn much. While racism is endemic in Spain, for example, the FA has taken a strong step in England.

Pressure from the FA?

And that is apparently a key tenet of Liverpool’s paranoid attack. That in seeking to take a strong line against racism, the Independent Commission has been pressured by the FA executive to, essentially, fake the findings of the report, an erroneously sanction Suárez. It is a nonsense that few outside of Liverpool’s fraternity will pay any heed to.

“Racial abuse between players on the field of play has been an unspoken taboo for too long, an area that has been unsatisfactorily dealt with by English football despite many cases over the past ten years,” said Piara Powar, Executive Director of Football Against Racism in Europe.

“We would also call on Liverpool FC to think again about their public campaign to dispute the charges and contest the principles involved in the case. As a club with an international standing the vehemency of their campaign is unquestionably causing them reputational harm, and has lead to Liverpool fans to become involved in a backlash of hatred on web forums and other public arenas.”

Liverpool backlash

That backlash has included some of the most obscene racist and deluded thinking ever experienced in the English football community. Racism, it seems, is more alive than ever if the content created on social media sites by Liverpool supporters is a barometer. The sad irony is that those Liverpool supporters subjecting Evra, Stan Collymore and others to racist abuse, do so in the name of ‘supporting’ a player accused of the very same crime.

Liverpool has much to answer for. The storm of vitriol, deliberately whipped up by the club and Dalglish, has intensified because of United’s involvement. Victimisation is well practised in Liverpool, but ‘injustice’ at United’s hands could never be accepted. Dalglish’s tweet, for example, when the panel’s verdict was announced shortly before the New Year that Suarez should “Never Walk Alone” pandered to the masses in crudest fashion.

It is a dangerous time for the game, concludes Professional Footballers’ Association chairman Gordon Taylor, who warns that racism is a curse that football must collectively challenge. Seemingly, in spite of Liverpool’s intransigence.

“Some issues are bigger than a player, the club or the game and racism is one of those. We have to learn from it and there should be no misunderstanding or ambiguity in the future,” adds Taylor.

“You don’t want such issues to divide clubs or society. We’re all in a football family but we’re all under the law of the land. Once a penalty has been paid and carried out we move on in a positive manner to make sure the penalty acts as a deterrent. The educational process continues.

“We all know the word ‘negro’ can be taken to mean a very inflammatory word. Any reference to the colour of a person’s skin has to be eradicated. In the heat of battle things can be said, but sometimes they go beyond what’s acceptable. We have had 20 or 30 years of campaigning against racism. I hope we can move on from this and learn our lessons.”

Sadly, it is a lesson unlikely to be heard on Merseyside if the past two months is a barometer. One of England’s finest clubs, mired in hate and paranoia. Now devoid of dignity, barren of respect, and when it comes to race relations, without a shred of legitimacy.

The reaction from Merseyside was predictable, even if the strength of Liverpool FC’s statement was shocking. “Twas always the way on Merseyside,” as one journalist surmised when, minutes after the Football Association handed down an eight game ban to striker Luis Suarez, pending appeal, for using abusive and racist language, the club lashed out at the FA, Patrice Evra and anybody else perceived to have wronged ‘their’ player. Wagons circled.

And while the case remains sub judice until the striker’s appeal is heard, and concluded, the prima face case against Suarez was always far less complex that presented. Indeed, the FA’s charge against Suarez was strengthened by the Uruguayan’s own words. The corroborating evidence, or lack thereof if the Merseyside club is believed, seemed far less relevant from the moment Suarez admitted in the Uruguayan media to using an unspecified racial epithet, believed to be “Negro”. The striker repeated the claim to the FA panel, leaving the three-man committee with little room for manoeuvre. Acceptable or not in Uruguay, any variation of the “N” word in England, or indeed northern Europe, was never likely to be tolerated. In English law ignorance has never been an excuse.

Yet, the reaction from Liverpool came anyway; another in a strategic pattern of action by the 119-year-old club to subvert the course of FA justice via the media. Liverpool’s cry is little more than a smokescreen, with the Suarez-Evra affair rather simple amid all the deep analysis of nuanced language, culture and, of course, race.

Liverpool’s reaction on Tuesday night may still have far-reaching consequences though, both for the club and relations between two of England’s most venerable institutions. Here is a world renown, and widely respected club, smearing Evra, defending the – prima facie – indefensible, while accusing the FA of institutional bias.

“It is our strong held belief, having gone over the facts of the case, that Luis Suarez did not commit any racist act,” Liverpool’s statement read last night – an inflammatory post that was immediately pulled from the club’s official website, only to be reinstated shortly afterwards.

“It is also our opinion that the accusation by this particular player was not credible – certainly no more credible than his prior unfounded accusations.

“Luis himself is of a mixed race family background as his grandfather was black. He has been personally involved since the 2010 World Cup in a charitable project which uses sport to encourage solidarity amongst people of different backgrounds with the central theme that the colour of a person’s skin does not matter; they can all play together as a team.

“He has played with black players and mixed with their families whilst with the Uruguay national side and was Captain at Ajax Amsterdam of a team with a proud multi-cultural profile, many of whom became good friends.”

Indeed, Evra may well have cause to seek legal advice after Liverpool’s reference to “prior unfounded accusations” – a nod to the 2009 case in which Chelsea groundsman Sam Bethel was accused of using racist language against the Frenchman. The accusation, the FA’s record notes, was made by United coaches Mike Phelan and Richard Hartis, and was at no point repeated by the player.

A reference without subtly: ‘Evra played the race card’.

It is also distressing that Liverpool, a club whose achievements are to be respected no matter the tribal rivalry, should fall into the classic racist’s excuse: ‘Suarez cannot be racist, he has black friends and family’. The charge, as clearly laid out by the FA, was never a question of whether Suarez is a racist, but whether the 26-year-old used racist and offensive language. Everything else is irrelevant.

Yet, Liverpool’s statement on Tuesday night also neatly sums up the club’s closed-ranks strategy over the past two months, with journalists regularly briefed on the club’s position, despite the FA’s warning not to prejudice the eventual hearing. Cynically, the Merseyside club is seemingly more than happy to fan the flames of tribalism.

The Telegraph’s Henry Winter, for example, repeated Liverpool’s case almost verbatim as the hearing began last week. Suarez could not be a racist, so the briefing went, because he has played with black players; the language used is acceptable in Uruguay and, quite laughably, Liverpool owner John Henry once held a memorial day for a black ex Boston Red Socks baseball player. Irrelevance, smoke and mirrors.

Suarez’ appeal is still pending, and although the evidence is unlikely to change, it is conceivable that another panel will cut the sanction. That committee could, of course, increase the ban and fine too. Suarez’ eight game ban and £40,000 fine represents little more than a month on the sidelines and three days’ wages. Many in the game will feel, with justification, that the FA’s response to racism is too little, far too late.

Without the reasoning behind the panel’s decision it is, of course, impossible to pass full judgement. Yet, a precedent is now set: use of the “N” word in any variation is unacceptable. For that, football fans of all colours – shirt and skin – will recognise that the governing body, albeit via an independent panel, has finally taken a stand.

Except on Merseyside it seems, where Suarez is not a bigot to be condemned, but a martyr slain at the FA’s door.